Dynamics of the structure of social interaction in the professional online community of sociologists (the example of online community of sociologists "Manufactura Socpoh")
The concept of community: networking approach. The emergence of the Internet as a new challenge to communities. Sociological professional communities in Russia. Description of the main types of social interactions: commenting and reacting; results.
| Рубрика | Социология и обществознание |
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Federal state autonomous educational
Institution for higher education
National research university
Higher school of economics
Faculty of Social Sciences
Dynamics of the structure of social interaction in the professional online community of sociologists (the example of online community of sociologists "Manufactura Socpoh")
Aryuna Radnaeva
Table of Content
Introduction
1. Literature review
1.1 The concept of community: networking approach
1.2 The emergence of the Internet as a new challenge to communities
1.3 Community of practice as an example of a community
1.4 Professional community: concept and structure
1.5 Sociological professional communities in Russia
2. Methodology
2.1 Research design
2.2 Description of the main types of social interactions: commenting and reacting
3. Research results
3.1 Static analysis of the networks based on comments and reactions
3.2 Dynamic social network analysis of the networks based on comments and reactions
Conclusion
References
Appendix
Introduction
Nowadays, professional communities have complex structure of social institutions and form of communications. In the context of digitalization, professional communities appear in the online environment. Taking into account the spread of the use of gadgets that provide virtually constant access online, the Internet can be considered today as one of the main tools of communication, but also a separate reality with its specific features and rules. Various communities are formed in the Internet, which communicate in a public way through writing posts, commenting and displaying emotions. There are different approaches to study online professional communities: quantitative based on the mass questionnaire, qualitative based on interviews, but also there is a network approach, which allows revealing the structure of the community. Social network analysis is one of the approaches which showed its effectiveness for studying the structures and dynamics of different entities, including communities.
The resent study is devoted to the structure of online sociological community, where connections between participants are based on online interactions. In order to reveal the structure of online community, we want to look not in terms of macro characteristics, but look deep into one particular community. This paper is devoted to the case study of Russian sociologists exists in Facebook ("Manufactura Socpoh"). Such community is natural type of online community without markups and bots. Of course such online community unites only some fragment of offline sociological community in Russia itself, but online format of the social interaction could present different sociological community than it exist in real world. social internet community
The social history of the formation of sociology in the USSR is quite nonlinear and dramatic [Doktorov, 2012], [Maltseva & Moiseev & Shirokanova & Brik, 2017], [Maltseva & Moiseev, 2018]; therefore, the study of sociologists is important. The recent research describing the sociological community in Russia include St. Peterburg sociology [Sokolov & Bocharov & Guba & Safonova, 2010], bibliographical connectedness of citations, [Batigin & Gradoselskaya, 2001], professional communication in the sociological community [Zadorin & Maltseva, 2013], online sociological community [Zadorin & Maltseva & Polukeev, 2012], case of discussion in the online sociological community [Maltseva, 2016].
This paper is structured as follows: introduction, literature review, methodology, results, references and appendix. Section 1 provides literature review, where we consider the concept of community in networking approach, the Internet influence on the community concept, community of practice as a framework for the professional online community of sociologists, studies on professional community and studies on sociological profession. Section 2 provides methodology part, which includes research design, description of the data, preparation of the data, description of the social interactions, social network analysis as the method for the research. Section 3 is devoted to the results of the research, which describe the static network analysis, which includes basic network analysis, patterns of social interaction, network connectivity and strong component analysis and the dynamic network analysis, which includes network connectivity and string component analysis.
1. Literature review
Community is one of the key sociological concepts, but, meanwhile, its definition leads to difficulties. A number of sociologists point to the existence of different interpretations of the "community" concept: "stretching" it between specific social relations and imaginary sets of people. In particular, some authors [McMillan, Chavis, 1986; Gruzd, Wellman, Takhteyev, 2011] refer to the study V. J. Hillary, 1955, which gives 94 definitions of community. This breadth leads some researchers to conclude that "the concept of 'community' from a fully functioning concept becomes a category, a code, an idol, ultimately a blind spot" [Vakhshtain, 2013], with the result that it loses its descriptive power. The search for a definition is complicated by the fact that various socio-political and technological changes that have occurred over the past century, have designated the existence of different types of public associations - national, global, virtual, immigrant, etc. - is also denoted by the term "community".
It is obvious that the search for an answer to the question of the definition of community should consist in the operationalization of the concept, the allocation of the main criteria by which the social group can or cannot be called a "community". The purpose of this section is to consider the possibilities of network perspective in the study of communities so below will be presented the history of the study of the concept of community and will attempt to operationalize from the position of network analysis. Next will be concretized the ideas of community in the Internet sphere, professional community features, described structural models in network theory and summarized the resent empirical researches on the professional online community topic.
1.1 The concept of community: networking approach
For a long time the concept of community, in fact, was identified with the concept of society - the tradition of using a common term to refer to them was laid back in ancient philosophy, the Latin term was translated into two interchangeable words, which were then used as synonyms. Already in the 19th century, these concepts were finally divided, becoming opposite concepts expressing social and institutional variables. Together with a couple of other opposing concepts - "the society" and "the state" - these concepts have played an important role in the construction of the theory in the social sciences with clear ideological and political consequences - in particular, in the works of T. Gobbs, Spinoza, J. Lock, I. Kant, J. Fichte. The difference between the familiar concepts of "Gesellschaft" and "Gemeinschaft" was described in the work of F. Tцnnies, where the latter meant a community in spirit, independent of the state.
Further development of the concept of community is connected with the names of K. Marx, F. Engels, F. Tцnnies, E. Durkheim, M. Weber and G. Simmel, who studied the economic, social and cultural processes of urbanization and its impact on social alienation, class formation, creation and destruction of individual identities. In the concept of Tцnnies, the community as a kind of utopian stage of development, "Golden time", this remained in the past - "Gemeinschaft", characterized by the presence of close family ties and a high level of solidarity. It was sharply opposed to the concept of modern society "Gesellschaft", which is characterized by a rupture of strong ties [Tцnnies, 1887 (1998)]. A similar distinction was used by Durkheim, when he described the mechanical and organic solidarity. The destruction of previous ties caused by large-scale migration to the city at the turn of 19-20 centuries. Thus, the city, which gave freedom from local provincialism and cosmopolitanism, on the other hand, led to social disorganization and atomism, which was expressed, for example, in the growth of suicides, considered in the works of Durkheim, and the emergence of sharply ascetic protestant individualism, described by Weber.
Georg Simmel called social interaction among people as sociation: "the form (realized in innumerable, different ways) in which individuals grow together into units that satisfy their interests. These interests, whether they are sensuous or ideal, momentary or lasting, conscious or unconscious, causal or teleological, form the basis of human societies". [Simmel, 1950: 41] Simmel's formalism was described in comparison with relationalist approach in the article of Emily Ericson. [Erikson, 2013: 227] Relationist approach argues about the nature of the relation and its formation: "the meaning one individual assigns to another is the basis of any relationship; in fact, the absence of meaning could easily be understood as the absence of a relationship--when you have no expectations or knowledge of another individual". [Erikson, 2013: 227] If in relationalist approach the social roles and structure is determined by human relations, then in formalism perspective the social form is primary, - or, in Simmel's terms, - social forms are a apriori: "Social forms do not arise from relationships experienced in the real world. Instead, relationships experienced in the world manifest the properties of ideal forms". [Erikson, 2013: 225]
A study of the impact of industrialization on the preservation of urban communities in the future was continued with representatives of the Chicago school of sociology within the areas of urban sociology (Urban Sociology) and the sociology of communities (Community Sociology). Representatives of this area combined sociological and anthropological theories with ethnographic field studies in order to understand how individuals interact with the urban social system, with special attention to social interactions at the micro level. As part of field research in 1920-1930-s representatives of the Chicago school confirmed earlier assumptions of the rise of community studies. The data showed that instead of being included in a separate cohesive community, urban residents are limited members of various, loosely connected and limited social networks. Such weak and disorganized relationships cannot provide social support to their members, making individuals more dependent on formal organizations (such as employment agencies). Consequently, indirect secondary relations tied urban residents to the city. Evidence of the loss of solidarity and the effects of disorganization has been found in areas as diverse as collective action, crime and migration.
Canadian sociologist Barry Wellman starts to study the community question from the position of social network analysis. He described the term "Lost community", which notes that the distribution of labor in industrial bureaucratic societies has weakened solidarity in communities. Wellman's "Community Question" describes the problem how large-scale social system divisions of labor associated with urbanization and industrialization affect the organization and content of the main primary relations [Wellman, 1979]. According to Wellman, the mistake of the representatives of the Lost community approach was that "because of its assumption that strong primary ties naturally occur only in densely knit, self-contained solidarities, the argument has unduly neglected the question of whether primary ties have been structurally transformed, rather than attenuated, in industrial bureaucratic social systems" [Wellman, 1979: 1205].
A peculiar reaction of many representatives of urban sociology to the evidence of the "Lost community" was the development by the opposite approach, which claimed that neighboring and related solidarity groups continue to exist successfully in industrial bureaucratic social systems [Wellman, 1979: 1205]. Field research, which was conducted in 1940-60, showed that citizens continue to organize personal communities in homogeneous living and working spaces (that is, on the scale of neighborhood, circle of friends, work). This approach advocates the position that, paradoxically, formal, centralized bureaucratic institutions have contributed to the maintenance of basic linkages as more flexible sources of social support. Taking into account that modern urban environments lead to narrower and more multiple social networks, representatives of this approach, however, have the opinion that many of these networks contribute to the development of a sense of community, forming a dense, independent clusters of connections in loose networks. This approach, which was called by Wellman the "Saved community", looks more positively at people's ability to adapt to complex social conditions - even in complex social and economic environments, people seek to organize social structures of mutual support. Among the examples in defense of this point of view, we can note the social movements of citizens in defense of urban neighborhoods from reconstruction (that is, in order to preserve the existing community).
However, Wellman notes some shortcomings of the second approach. First, there was an evidence of solidarity networks among poor, traditional and ethnic minorities. Secondly, Wellman and his colleagues did not fully consider the starting point of the apologists of the "Lost community" - that the modern distribution of labor can affect the structure of primary ties. As a result, they sought and studied - only solidarity groups in neighborhoods, kinship systems, at work - without considering solidarity ties in the format of a wider social network [Wellman, 1979]. As a result, weak and less constrained networks were rarely presented in studies under this approach.
Wellman also notes a common problem for the first and second approaches in the implementation. In many studies, the structural "question of the Community" involved two components - 1) submission of a normative nature on the existence of solidarity of sentiment in the community, and 2) awareness of the specific spatial distribution of major linkages in local areas. "As a result of this confounding, the fundamentally structural Community Question has often been transmuted into a search for local solidarity, rather than a search for functioning primary ties, wherever located and however solidary", writes Wellman [Wellman,1979: 1202].
Here, Wellman emphasizes his main argument - the correct question of sociologists is the analysis of social structure and social relations, while the issues of social attitudes and spatial distribution occupy important but secondary positions. Because of the issues of locality and solidarity coming to the fore, the analysis was carried out within a limited area - since it was considered a priori as an important part of the city's main connections has a local organization. When, within the framework of the conducted research, there was a shortage of local solidarity behavior and solidarity moods, a natural consequence was the idea of the destruction of the community.
Wellman proposes to look at the community from a different perspective - the position of the social network approach. A city dweller can be seen as a "node" or "top of the graph," in the terminology of social network analysis, which links together complex social structures - which can lead to completely different analytical conclusions about the loss or existence of a community. The benefit of the social network approach in this case is that the starting point is connections, relationships between individuals, not supposed solidarity groups or territorial entities. As a result, the study returns to the structural problems posed by the "Community Question", getting rid of normative and spatial categories.
Wellman's own answer to the "Community Question" is the concept of the "Liberated community", the analytical conclusions of which were obtained in the course of the famous study led by Wellman in East York, one of the suburbs of Toronto (Canada), which was held in 1979 and repeated in 1988 [Wellman, 1979]. This approach emerged from an analytical comparison of the ideas of Lost and Saved communities. This view confirms the preponderance and importance of primary ties, but on the other hand, admits that in the modern city most ties are not organized into dense, strongly related solidarity groups. Among the contributing factors, Wellman notes the following: a) separation of place of residence, place of work and location of related groups, which involves citizens in various social networks with weak solidarity; b) high levels of mobility, leading to a weakening of existing links and a slowdown in the creation of new strong links; c) cheap and efficient means of transportation and communication, reducing the social costs of spatial distances, which makes it easier to maintain distributed basic links; d) the size, density and diversity of cities, which increase opportunities for access to; e) the spatial distribution of primary ties and the heterogeneity of the city, which reduce the probability that those with whom the urban dweller is connected will be tightly connected in solidarity communities [Wellman, 1979: 1206]. Thus, it turns out that in addition to being involved in local communities, urban residents have external connections beyond these boundaries. Hence, Wellman's states that there is a need to abandon locality as the initial point of analysis [Wellman, 1979: 1203]. "The Liberated argument contends that primary ties now tend to form sparsely knit, spatially dispersed, ramifying structures instead of being bound up within a single densely knit solidarity", concludes Wellman [Wellman, 1979: 1207].
This means that the main links are often distributed among multiple, spatially interconnected social networks - which, however, are not "institutionally complete", but represent a wide range of direct and indirect links to the distributed resources of the industrial bureaucratic social system. Obtaining resources from such networks is not a question of group solidarity, but a question of the quality of a particular dyadic connection, the simplicity of maintaining contact, the ability of other network members to provide indirect access to additional resources, connectivity between different networks (example - a well-known study of Granovetter, devoted to the phenomenon of "weak ties" [Granovetter, 1974]). This allows Wellman to assume that "Liberated networks may be more than just a passive rearrangement of primary ties in response to the pressures of large-scale social system changes. Instead, they can well be active attempts by contemporary urbanites to gain access to and to control system resources, given differentiated social systemic divisions of labor" [Wellman, 1979: 1227].
On the other hand, this distribution of connections may contain some "danger" to maintain a sense of identity of the individual - sparse relationships between networks may mean that no community can apply its requirements to a member of the group. While citizens have not lost their access to people and resources within the community and might even have expanded it - for those seeking a sense of community within a neat, simple hierarchical group structure, it can indeed be lost [Wellman, 1979: 1227].
Criticism of the representation of communities as local solidarity groups can be considered from the standpoint of the categorical apparatus of sociology. Russian sociologist Viktor Vakhshtain notes that from the point of view of representatives of the Chicago school, there are two oppositions - "own/foreign" and "internal/external". Therefore, "the community is thought of as a function of individuals and territory" [Vakhshtain n, 2013], and cannot be thought of as an out-territorial entity. However, in practice, this way of thinking about the community leads to the fact that "from the subject of explanation they become the main explaining factor, becoming something like a "voluntary cause of all things" in the picture of the world of the sociologist. Community substantiality, they are attributed to some a priori properties. For example, why do Italian gangs in Chicago beat their Irish competitors? Because of course in "Italian culture" the primary tool of dispute resolution - edged weapons, while for the "Irish community" it "is not inherent in" [Vakhstain, 2013].
Meanwhile, communities can no longer act as such "producers" of social phenomena, since constructivist researchers in the second half of the 20th century have shown that communities themselves are "produced" [Vakhstain, 2013]. As an example of the work in this area, we can note the work of "Imaginary communities", which deals with the mechanics of the construction of communities by certain interest groups on the example of national identity. In Anderson's "imaginary communities" the members of the group, who never learn about most of the people in their group, at the same time have an image of their community - a community in the style of "Gemeinschaft", which has a value character.
Thus, in the search for answers to the questions posed by the industrialization community, sociologists have come to the conclusion that locality can no longer be considered as one of its main constitutive characteristics. The further development of technologies contributed to the confirmation of this idea, but at the same time raised new Wellman's "community questions".
1.2 The emergence of the Internet as a new challenge to communities
Whereas the main volume of sociological studies of communities in the 20th century was devoted to seeking an answer to the questions posed by scientists of the 19th century, drastic revolutionary changes in technologies that occurred closer to the beginning of the 2000s meant new challenges to the communities in their more or less traditional form.
For the first time the concept of virtual community was presented in the eponymous work of G. Rheingold [Rheingold, 1993, 2000], which described one of the first communities existing in the network - The WELL (Whole Earth 'Electronic Link). This study was one of the first to talk about the reality of the existence of communities in virtual environments. In general, this study have shown that members of online communities, combined with each other's interest, work or training, reflect the same kinds of community characteristics that can be found in offline communities, such as, for example, the formation of a common language, rules of conduct and compliance, social support, the creation of a common shared history. As an example, we can cite the definition of Rheingold's "virtual community": "Virtual communities are social associations that arise from the network, when a sufficient number of people lead public discussions long enough, with enough human feeling, to form networks of personal relationships in cyberspace" [Rheingold, 1993].
At the same time, by the mid-1990s, real and virtual life began to converge due to the spread of personal computers and the expansion of the Internet infrastructure. Thus, "cyberspace" with its "virtual communities", formerly understood as separate spheres of life, gradually began to enter into the daily practices of people. Studies of the intersection and complementarity of online practices with everyday practices have concluded that Internet-mediated communication has become another tool in the overall system of communication tools used by people, including maintaining their offline contacts (such as telephone).
In addressing the "new challenge to communities", the network approach has also shown its strength. The "revolutionary" view of the community not as a locally defined, limited group, but as an Association of spatially separated, interconnected individuals, "untied" communications, information exchange, social support, provision of services from personal meetings and joint stay. This understanding of community has been outlined in Wellman's concept of "personal community" [Wellman, 2007; Chua & Madej & Wellman, 2011]. Personal communities are "social networks, defined as an individual set of ties" [Chua & Madej & Wellman, 2011: 101]. Representatives of the network approach see communities as interpenetrating combinations of online and offline worlds, managed by autonomous individuals from the centers; ego maintains links with alters. Personal communities might be characterized by the unification of local and regional ties, regardless of how far they are from the individual in territorial terms. People just "switch" between their different networks.
At the same time, individual communities "overlap" with each other: each specific role in our life - a parent, a colleague, a fan of soap Opera - corresponds to a specific community for this role - relationship, profession, audience. People's identities reflect the fluidity of membership in different communities, rather than belonging to the same group, people live, work and communicate in different sets of intersecting relationships, cyclically moving between different networks. It is worth noting that considering all the connections of an individual without exception, the researcher gets an idea of his personal network; the personal community consists of networks that are defined by the individual as important.
But, while Wellman talks specifically about personal communities, the network view also looks at groups - which are formed as a result of the interaction of individuals in their personal networks in such a way that there are network-level effects between them that lead to the formation of communities. Although such communities have become more visible with the development of the Internet (in particular - social networking services like Facebook), the personal community is not a characteristic of the "new time". According to Wellman, the community has always been personal. However, in different historical periods, due to the different organization of social life, different levels of personal mobility and available technical means, it took different forms.
Barry Wellman and colleagues conceptualize online community as it social network [Wellman B.& Boase J.& Chen W., 2002]. They explain the term of community before the Internet as homogeneous group with neighborhood interaction. Authors define communities as "networks of interpersonal ties that provide sociability, support, information, a sense of belonging, and social identity" [Wellman B.& Boase J.& Chen W., 2002: 153]. Authors describe the study about suburb of Toronto Netville's community online and offline. Difference in relations depending on using Internet to communicate with neighbors:
· Residents who used the Internet knew more neighbors, while residents who did not use the Internet knew fewer names of neighbors.
· Residents who used the Internet had more long distance relationships with friends and relatives, than residents who did not use the Internet.
· Providing the social support as the part of Internet communications became additional characteristic of online interaction.
Authors compare the online community with a neighborhood, which have some local geographical patterns and senses. They explain the new feature of online communication as "network individualism". "In networked societies, boundaries are more permeable, interactions are with diverse others, linkages switch between multiple networks, and hierarchies are flatter and more recursive" [Wellman B.& Boase J.& Chen W., 2002: 160]. So, today each of Internet users could create his or her own network, with the possible difference his network in the real life. Yuri Rykov in his dissertation comments Wellman's approach in the following way: "The extreme position within this approach suggests that the idealized version of the traditional community - the community - never existed, but there are only personal communities - self-centered social networks. In this case, computer and communication technologies are presented as means for maintaining, rather than destroying communities" [Rykov, 2016: 35].
Taking into account the definitions and theoretical conceptualizations of citied authors, online community can be defined as group of people who perform the same practice of usage of Internet technology, who are involved into the online interactions and share the same social identity. The main feature of online communities is that they provide a possibility for including to routine everyday life such kind of social interactions which existence is impossible in real life. Online social interactions are specific type of human communication - where weaker links intensify such as friends, followers, subscribers.
Behavior in online community is always public type of social interaction. The question of publicity in the Internet communication is widely describing topic. In Facebook services written that all posted information is public and everybody can see it (even not Facebook users). [What is public information on Facebook? | Facebook Help Center. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/help/203805466323736]
Facebook published that public information may:
1. Be associated with you even outside of Facebook.
2. Appear in results when someone searches on Facebook or another search engine.
3. Be available to the games, apps, and websites you and your friends use built into Facebook.
4. Be available to anyone who uses our APIs, such as Graph API.
All the information which is posted by user is public for all Internet users, not only Facebook users. Hence online social interactions are specific type of human communication; there are several theoretical basis of their interpretation. In this research the public communication in online community expresses in the practice of commenting and practice of reacting (Like, love and other).
British anthropologist of social media Daniel Miller and colleagues spent 18 month in the field in order to understand how human from the specific culture and nation use social media. They had comparative study with 9 countries: China, Brazil, Turkey, Chile, India, England, Italy and Trinidad. In the quantitative part of their research questionnaire contained 43 questions in total and 1199 respondents across all of our nine field sites [Miller, 2016]
Regarding the posting on social media, there are differences in this practice among countries. More than in other countries, China receiving posts from siblings, in India, Italy and Trinidad friends are regularly posting on social media, while in Turkey nobody posts regularly (Table 1). So, there is a difference in behavior in the social media among countries.
Table 1. Posts regularly on social media
|
parents |
siblings |
partner |
children |
friends |
nobody |
||
|
Brazil |
5% |
32% |
14% |
2% |
47% |
0% |
|
|
Chile (North) |
9% |
13% |
23% |
7% |
49% |
0% |
|
|
China (Rural) |
10% |
40% |
7% |
2% |
41% |
0% |
|
|
China (Industrial) |
4% |
25% |
1% |
11% |
59% |
0% |
|
|
India (South) |
3% |
15% |
9% |
5% |
68% |
0% |
|
|
Italy |
4% |
18% |
10% |
6% |
62% |
0% |
|
|
Trinidad |
6% |
15% |
15% |
4% |
60% |
0% |
|
|
Turkey (S.E.) |
1% |
8% |
13% |
1% |
49% |
28% |
|
|
England |
19% |
10% |
14% |
12% |
45% |
0% |
Theorizing the like button, there is an opinion that it is an example of nano-level of interaction "as an equivalent to the Goffmanian micro-gesture, and use it to denote the most minute and fleeting forms of interaction online, such as liking". [Eranti & Longkila, 2015] Another option is to understand likes and other reactions as "paralinguistic digital affordances" and defined them as "a common means of feedback across most social media platforms" [Hayes & Wesselmann & Carr, 2018]. The authors claimed that the perception of the PDA can be different: social support, acknowledging of the post and other.
Meanings of like are also different: "My father passed away. May he rest in peace." - "Like"; "Civil war is ravaging Syria. Can't we do something?" - "Like" ; "The NFL catch rule is an unmitigated disaster." - "Like" [Tilly, 2018: 319]. "Like" is not understood literally, it has meanings, which are constructed by social context. Daniel Tilly requested his classification of like:
1. Emotional "Likes"
2. Awkward "Likes"
3. Multiple issue "Likes"
4. Single issue "Likes"
5. Inculpatory "Likes"
Emotional like represent the emotional context of the situation, post, picture and other. Awkward like means that the user might have multiple numbers of emotions, which he cannot express differently, - only by using like. "Even in awkward instances, a "like" conveys to the user that the liking party has seen, heard, and appreciates what is happening in their life - even if they are disappointed to hear the news" [Tilly, 2018: 326]. Multiple issue means that in the post there are several ideas, so "Likes" in this case is equal to "I hear you" rather than agreement. But single issue "Likes" means an agreement with the author, because in the message there is only one idea. Inculpatory "Likes" follows the idea of inevitable reaction in the situations when someone denotes your name in social media, so you cannot ignore it, because everybody knows that you see it. So, it obvious that Like has multiple meanings depending on the context and cultural patterns.
As a symbol of expression, Like can be constructed in order the whole online behavior. Authors have "networked" definition of online interaction: "users' behavior is likely to be influenced and constrained by the opinions of their Facebook friends. More importantly, this influence is not only dyadic (between user A and her particular Facebook friend B) but also networked: A's relationship with B may be affected by B's relationship with another of A's Facebook friends, C". [Eranti&Longkila, 2015]
Figure 1. Factors and audiences affecting liking behavior on Facebook
In the figure 1 presented the influence of F1, F2, F3 and F4 as all Facebook friends of the posting user: "F1, F2 and F3 are all Facebook friends with each other, but none of these three is Facebook friend with F4. Of these four actors, F1, F2 and F3 have liked the original post by the user". [Eranti&Longkila, 2015] Social network of each online user is influenced by other's friends and their behavior. The possibility that posting user will give a like as his friends F1, F2, F3, who are friends between each other, is high, in the network analysis this principle called homogeneity. So, public communication in the Internet can influence the online user's behavior.
Regarding the online behavior, Wellman's personal community can be duplicated and transformed into the Internet. In such field social interactions changed into several practices such as posting, sharing, commenting, liking and other. There is a network approach in the research of online social interactions, important groups of nodes that interact with each other in a characteristic way. For example, Miller's research shows that different groups of an individual's personal community communicate on the Internet in different countries. Also in studies on likes, it is shown that the giving a like practice depend on the other nodes in the network and on the social context.
1.3 Community of practice as an example of a community
The reason why the concept of "community of practice" is considering in this study is that the object of the research is the example of such active community. This concept was proposed in 1991 by the social anthropologist Jean Lave and social theorist E. Wenger, who now are recognized as experts in the field of theory of knowledge. In brief, "community of practice" is defined as "Groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis " [Wenger& McDermott & Snyder 2002: 4]. This term was developed in the context of the study of traditional apprenticeship. The authors said that E. Durkheim while describing the history of professional groups in the work "On the division of social labor" argued that the professional community can provide social connections that are important for strengthening the matter of social trust and mutual commitment, even when the forces of industrialization and accompanying social disruptions are trying to break the historical ties that unite people in the villages [Wenger& McDermott & Snyder, 2002].
Representatives of the idea of communities of practice note that not every community can be called a community of practice, so it is necessary to have several basic characteristics. In particular, the structural model of the community of practice presupposes the existence of three main elements - the community and practice itself, as well as the sphere of interests. An overview of [Wenger, 2002; Wenger & McDermott& Snyder, 2002] allows the following interpretation of these elements.
Area of interest (or field of activity, area of expertise) - the presence of a shared area of interest by all participants, a certain topic that contributes to the formation of certain practices; a kind of meta-purpose of community activities, which can range from quite common tasks like healthy eating to specialized professional expertise, for example, the development of the design of the wing of the aircraft. In addition, organizing around one area of interest can be work within the same discipline, the same profession, common practices. An important condition for the association is the presence of participants in the general background, skills, knowledge (for example, members of the "community of entertaining chemistry" should have basic knowledge about the chemical elements). The presence of a common sphere of interests first, creates a sense of identity with the community (which increases their motivation and responsibility), and secondly, determines the identity of the community, its place and value, legitimizes it for participants and other stakeholders.
Another important element is actually the community: the constituent parts of the community were discussed in the previous section, and they also apply to the communities of practice - here also in the process of interaction (which also involves joint training) develop a sense of belonging, commitment, identity, common history, etc. This allows us to speak of communities as "emerging" in the course of activities [Brown & Duguid, 1991]. At the same time, the authors emphasize the difference between the community and the technical means by which the interaction is carried out.
Finally, the next element is a common practice shared by community members, which can be defined as a set of different ways of producing knowledge in the community within its sphere of interest; a kind of culture of activity. If the area of interest determines the topic that community members are working on, then practice is the specific knowledge that members create. This may include cases, stories, information, belief systems, problem-solving tools, documents, etc. [Lasser & Prusak, 1999] define practice as "knowledge in action" - "the representation of how individuals actually perform their jobs on a day-to-day basis, as opposed to more formal policies and procedures that reflect the way work should be performed".. Practice implies long-term interaction of participants.
Thus, the community of practice as a whole is characterized by the presence of internal leaders - organizers, experts, opinion leaders, administrators. This is a characteristic of the community of practice, where some individuals "are placed" in the center as "masters" or "teachers", and some participants are on the periphery, being "students". However, such "centers of attraction" may also occur in other communities. Therefore, it can be concluded that the community of practice is not homogeneous - since it allows for the presence of leaders (although perhaps it is a matter of hierarchy), as well as people with different characteristics as their participants (for example, different professions). Nevertheless, it seems that in an effectively working community of practice there is still some homogeneity of the "first kind", which is expressed in the division of common interest when joining the group - in addition, within the framework of joint practices, then this homogeneity is enhanced, thanks to a sense of identity and common history.
To the three characteristics listed, we can add another one, the idea of which was set out in a recent book by Wenger and his colleagues [Wenger & White & Smith, 2009], devoted to the study of the interaction of the community of practice and technology. Technology as a usage of various means of communication became part of the community of practice in online platform. Hence, we are talking about the existence of a special - digital - habitat of communities of practice, that is, a "virtual settlement".
The concept "community of practice" is revealed in different perspectives and describes the knowledge and information share inside the community. Regarding the groups which are connected by the same practice and identity, the professional community could also be considered as community of practice.
According to the definition of community of practice and it's principles, the Zircon created the project in organization of the research in the collaborative network by creating the online community "Open opinion" [Zadorin & Maltseva & Polukeev, 2012]. Authors highlight several stages of the collaborative project in the online community:
1. Formation of the "general meaning" of the project, mission of the community of practice, the project objectives
2. Functional self-determination of project participants (including personal investments), formation of community structure and investment plan
3. Implementation of the mission, achievement of common goal
4. Profit, assessment of the contribution, the distribution of income and the rights to the ultimate income
In the article of Rosenbaum and Shachaf was described theoretical contribution to study online communities. Q&A community is a specific type of site "where people are asking questions and providing answers". The authors supposed that there are three structurational concepts - structuration, the duality of structure and social practices which are useful, because "they can account for the dynamism of online communities". [Rosenbaum & Shachaf, 2010:1940]
From formalistic perspective, Rosenbaum and Shachaf interpret Giddens "structuration" term as a process of creation and recreation routine moments thought social interaction. Giddens wrote that "The essential recursiveness of social life is constituted in social practices; structure is both medium and outcome of practices". [Giddens, 1979: 5] The central concept of Giddens's approach is duality of structure as a formation and recreation of the social practices. The same analogy has term "duality of technology" as "a dual nature as objective reality and as socially constructed product" [Orlikowski, 1992:423]. Such theoretical base could be used in studies of community of practice, concrete in such online communities.
Online community could be considered as community of practice if there are the same area of interest, formed community, the shared practice and technology involvement. Such perspective allows understanding the sense of community, its mission and principles. Professional communities may be considered as community of practice if the participants are interested in the same subject. The common practice in the professional communities connect people with each other and produce the sharing the information and knowledge. The technology component is used when the community of practice formed in the Internet and users need to have skills to communicate in online environment.
1.4 Professional community: concept and structure
Professional community is based on the same identity, common values and shared practice. In 1957 Godee described the community perspective to profession understanding with the local territorial separation. "Each profession is a community without physical locus and, like other communities with heavy in-migration, one whose founding fathers are linked only rarely by blood with the present generation". [Goode, 1957, p.194]. He pointed out several characteristics of such community:
· Sense of identity;
· Terminal or continuing status for the most part;
· Shared values in common;
· Role definitions are agreed upon and are the same for all members;
· Common language;
· Power structure;
· Social limits;
· Training processes influence to an adult socialization process.
However, such characteristics do not exist in every type of professional communities. In the research of professional community of journalists the professional identity proceeds from the inclusion in the professional community to a greater extent than the availability of professional education [Zircon, 2017]. Work experience is the most important component for defining an individual as a professional journalist. [Zircon, 2017: 33]. So, nowadays characteristics of professional community could be differing from the Goode's one.
Community was described as a form of professional control. The same year was published the article of Ernest Greenwood, who developed the structural approach regarding the profession attributes, where community played the controlling and forming sanction role at the macro level. "Every profession strives to persuade the community to sanction its authority within certain spheres by conferring upon the profession a series of powers and privileges. Community approval of these powers privileges may be either informal or formal; formal approval is that reinforced by the community's police power". [Greenwood, 1957, p.48]. While Goode noted the influential mechanism of community approach in order to describe the processes of socialization and social control inside the professional community. The necessity of the merging and adoption of social roles at work influence on the prestige: "the highest rewards of prestige and money are most likely to be granted to the practitioners who actually live up to the professional role obligations". [Goode, 1957, p.196]. As an example of social control, author explains the features and connections of client choice and public rankings. Organization involvement forms the structural control characteristics, which constitute specific professional norms and values. "There are continuous professional judgments of high or low achievement. To the extent that any community exists, it evaluates the behavior of its members. Professional life is so fundamentally based on achievement, that such judgments of rank are made constantly. Indeed, rankings within the profession are a mode of social control." [Goode, 1957, p.198].
Comparing the Greenwood's explanation of community role in the profession and Goode's one, it might be claimed that both have structural evaluation, but Greenwood's profession is considered inside the social structure in macro level terms of Parsons, while Goode's profession is developed in mezzo level from the stratification model of Sorokin.
Numbers of empirical research describing different professional groups conducted: for example, medical professionalism [Veatch, 1972; Bronner, 2007; Podstreshnaya, 2014], teacher's community [Louis & Marks & Kruse, 1996; Starnes & Saderholm & Webb, 2010] and many others. Nowadays community could be transformed into the new form within the technological development and Internet. Professional online communities could be discovered as a source of professional training, improving their skills and competence, which ultimately leads to an improvement in the quality of professional field. In the research of online community of teachers, Duncan-Howell highlights main feature of such community as a source of support and platform for professional learning. [Duncan-Howell, 2010].
Regarding the structure of online communities, Yuri Rykov in his dissertation about the structure of social networks in online communities, where he compared three different types of online communities: fan community, professional communities and social movements communities. He developed the understanding of the structure of online communities in two ways: "as a network of social relations between users, and differentiation of users in terms of participation in the online group". [Rykov, 2016: 47] Therefore, Rykov analyzed the participation in online group on the one hand, which could be determined as group membership, including different ways of communication: providing the topic for discussion, commenting, "liking" and other, and on the other hand, he considered the network of friendship of the group members.
Taking into account the participation in online groups of professionals, Rykov noticed that there is a more participatory behavior of active participants than in another types of online groups. However, it does not lead to the formation of social capital of weak ties for the majority of participants, but is accompanied by the emergence of intermediary participants with a high centrality of mediation, and, accordingly, having a large "overcoming social capital" (bridging social capital), which can give them special advantages in the virtual community. Regarding the core of the professional community, Rykov claims: "Within an active user segment, participation in content creation and knowledge sharing is more egalitarian than in other types of groups, through greater and more equitable user participation in communication". [Rykov, 2016: 174]
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